The Evolution of Touch

In the 15th century, the Italian renaissance polymath, Leon Battista Alberti, wrote a famous treatise on painting titled De pictura. In his treatise, Alberti praised painting above other art forms such as sculpture because painting often went beyond the act of mere imitation and was able to create an illusion that could persevere through the centuries. Moreover, the art of painting was a uniquely visual experience and, unlike sculpture, it did not incite the desire to touch, for what we saw in a painting remained poetically out of our reach. This treatise postulated by Alberti during the period of the Renaissance is not entirely archaic and arcane to the world of today. We still take pleasure in the transitory ability to escape into the painted world we see before us, and we are in still in favor of preserving the the illusion we see before us. But have we become drawn to what was only considered possible in the realm of sculpture, the desire to touch a painting?

This question of touch is a thought provoking one because of a recent phenomenon that I like to refer to as the “slide to unlock”. Yes, this phenomenon is none other than our increasing desire to avail ourselves of the sense of touch. Apple has gently nudged us along into the wonderful world of touch through iPhones, iPads, and iPods. So, it suffices to say that in the technological realm, we have effectively and decisively entered into the era of the sensory. And this definitive entry into the realm of the sensory has led to the development of apps, some of which have enabled us to explore the world of art at our very fingertips.

Nowadays, we can explore artworks using our sense of touch without compromising our moral integrity or damaging the artwork, and shattering the illusion before us. For instance, in Artfinder’s app on John Constable’s oil sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum, we “can zoom to show each of the sketches in their incredible painterly detail, and follow Constable’s progress from Suffolk, to London and Brighton.” Artfinder has also collaborated with various other museums to create apps that augment and physically sensitize the viewing experience. As such, the way we engage with art may be undergoing a paradigm shift; a shift towards the touch.

Consequently, more and more museums are now incorporating the sense of touch into what was hitherto seen as predominantly visual and contemplative experience. Earlier this summer, in the exhibition titled “Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912”, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art provided visitors with iPads that were “equipped with a specially developed iCubist application to scrutinize and delve deeply into four key paintings.” The app also allowed visitors to “deconstruct a cubist composition and attempt to put it back together.” The iCubist app developed for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art demonstrates how the sense of touch, in unison with the sense of sight, can help demystify a movement such as Cubism.

It is also interesting to note how the contemporary art world is evolving with the rise of the touch. For instance, artist David Hockney began painting on his iPhone in 2008 and last year he began using his iPad to create art. Using the Brushes app, Hockney would draw flowers, using just the edge of his thumb, and send them to his friends.  His oeuvre now includes landscapes, still life, and self-portraits all created by a sweeping touch, rather than a stroke, of creativity and ingenuity. Currently, his work is being shown at the Royal Ontario Museum in the exhibition titled “David Hockney’s Fresh Flowers: Drawings on the iPhone and iPad.”

So is the art world moving in tandem with the technological world? Is it stepping into the realm of the sensory?

As artists such as David Hockney remain a rare few, the art of painting on tangible mediums such as canvas will most likely survive decades of technological progress. The modern day audience, however, may be more willing and receptive toward the introduction of touch into the viewing experience. This is because, as an audience, we may be drawn towards what can only be termed as a two-part deception; to make tactile, what in reality is untouchable, while reveling in a scene that in essence, is a grand illusion.

Hear Art Everywhere with Locally Toned

It’s a curse of our society. Modern innovation has led to the grotesque abomination, the “cell phone ringtone”. Obnoxious and pervasive at best, invasive and stupid at worst, you will hear them anytime, any place, and might hear one even now (you should get that – I’ll wait). Consider, though, what if cell phone ringtones were art? Sounds can be art, so why can’t the sounds coming out of your phone be works of art? T. Foley, a Pittsburgh based artist, tackles that question with her “public art/original ringtone creation project”, Locally Toned. Users can create and download unique ringtones for free from the Locally Toned website, and to date 11,103 ringtones have been downloaded. I had a chance to speak with Ms. Foley on her work with the ubiquitous ringtone…

Locally Toned Collaborator Krista Martin poses with a ringtone creator at the Uniontown Poultry Association's fall show

Can you speak a little on how your work democratizes art? Why is this important to you? How do you see the Internet as a component of it?

Thanks for visiting with me, Rachael.

I have a background in media literacy, so I’m interested in people having access to a wide variety of media, and the skills and tools that allow them to produce and analyze media for themselves. Locally Toned democratizes art because it’s produced with others and for others. I’m not an artist working alone in a studio producing ringtones to sell to others. I collaborate with people to turn sounds that are meaningful and/or interesting to them into ringtones. This past weekend I went to the Uniontown Poultry Association’s Fall Show in Fayette County to capture bird sounds with the help of that community. And I collaborate with technologists such as Deeplocal and other artists, Encyclopedia Destructica, to get the tones to the public/onto phones. Deeplocal  built the technology for the project; Encyclopedia Destructica helped me to design distribution techniques (the ringtone art cards). Unlike paintings or sculptures for sale in a gallery, which many people can’t afford, people may own and share these works free-of-charge.

An example of the ringtone art cards

As conceptual artist Robert Smithson expressed in a 1972 essay entitled “Cultural Confinement,” for Artforum, some works of art, when placed in galleries, loose their charge. Locally Toned is that type of work--one may listen to the tones online, but the real audience for the project exists anywhere a user who’s downloaded the tones receives a call on his/her cell phone. The work performs itself at unexpected times and in unexpected places, outside traditional art spaces (galleries and museums).

My boyfriend likes to say that Locally Toned gives people a “sneak-attack” ability. When some of the more unusual tones go off in public, it creates a little scene. For example, the LRAD tone went off one day on my phone at Deeplocal. The CEO assumed it was a fire alarm and told everyone in to exit the building. I let them know it was a false alarm--I was just testing out the sonic canon ringtone.

The tones function as conversation starters. I often use tones from the Bayernhof Museum. When they go off in public, strangers ask me to identify the sounds. Then I tell them about the nearby museum for mechanical musical instruments. The conversation is usually short, but there’s an unexpected exchange that occurs as a result of the tones.

Ringtones are an invention of modern technology, what drew you to use them as a medium? Is there a benefit to using ringtones in your work as opposed to other technologies?

I had always wanted to make ringtones for my phone, and a “call for artists” from Deeplocal inspired me to develop this project. I was also motivated by a strong dislike for music industry and pre-installed ringtones on cell phones--I wanted to make tones that were more interesting or beautiful. Then I became curious about what other people would do if they had the opportunity to make ringtones. And with my media literacy background, I wanted to model that it’s possible to make and share homegrown ringtones.

I use technology to connect and share with others--recording equipment to make the tones, photography to document the sounds, the Web site to distribute the ringtones, and the Blog to promote the stories behind the sounds that are created. Technology helps to extend my work and ideas out into the world. I like what Lawrence Lessig says about on- and off-line sharing economies in his book Remix (http://remix.lessig.org/).

“Gifts in particular, and the sharing economy in general, are thus devices for building connections with people. They establish relationships and draw upon those relationships. They are the glue of community.”

Locally Toned is public art through service to the community—a series of production, promotion and distribution interactions between the public and myself. New social interaction spaces (physical and cyber) are developed around the making and sharing of these tiny aural documentaries, or soundscape snippets. The tones serve as audio identifiers for members of various communities. A person might identify as a cyclist and download Erok's Bicycle Bell Tone for use on his/her phone. The tones are also plotted on a ringtone map.

Do you see your work moving into other technologies in the future? If so, are there any technologies in particular you would like to explore?

I like to exploit tools that are easy for people to access and use. Recently I’ve created a live and online performance work with Hector, a shy ventriloquist dummy. In The Dummy Is Present, my re-interpretation of Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Present, 2010, Hector appears on Chatroulette with an audience behind him. The audience appears in the work as spectators and as part of the show. People may sit behind us passively, watching Hector interact with others online (my computer is projected onto a big screen during the performance), or they may become part of the interaction. Some of the people we encounter online say, “Is this for real?!” Audience members respond by shouting or waving a hello, and they may applaud if the other party on Chatroulette performs for us. The performance has been described as voyeuristic, riveting, and magical--it’s all those things and more. I made the work because I wanted to draw attention to contemporary notions of public and private space, and to consider what it means to have an online presence. The Dummy Is Present is part of a larger body of work, Easy Pieces, a series of live and recorded performances featuring a ventriloquist dummy and myself. I’d like to find an interesting application for Twitter within the larger project, but I haven’t figured that out yet.

With Locally Toned and the work with Hector, I use a particular technology so that I may say something about our experiences with it. And I enjoy making work that evolves and changes over time. With both projects, I never know what’s going to happen next--and that’s really fun for me.

The Dummy Is Present - Photo by Larry Rippel

Do you think Locally Toned will ever reach a conclusion?

Locally Toned is an ongoing project. I’m not a Web developer, but I want to be a good shepherd of the project’s technology so that the archive will remain accessible to the public and so that I may add to the collection for years to come. I’m presently seeking funding to make improvements to the Web site, and to release all the tones in the iPhone format. Within the next year, I’d like to identify other cities to collaborate with. The tones are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike code, and they show up on other folks’ Blogs. It’s great to see people point back to Locally Toned, and see them re-tell stories about the origins of the sounds.

Ms. Foley is also looking for some Pittsburgh local help with her next project,

Who wants to make a ringtone? This month, I will receive a grant from The Fine Foundation to create a new series of tones from the Pittsburgh region. I’m looking for collaborators. People can contact me by email: locallytoned@gmail.com.

And if you thought her Chatroullete dummy performance sounded cool, Pittsburgh has another opportunity to see it live:

The next performance of The Dummy Is Present will take place at The Warhol Museum on the evening of January 6, 2012. More info can be found at the Ventwittoquisms Tumblr.

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So what are you waiting for? Go customize your phone with some art!

IBM: A Century of Avant-Garde Thinking

If asked whether data can be beautiful, many of us in the art world would give the questioner a quizzical look. We would then proceed to answer along the lines of “In the art world, we do not ponder over the beauty of data.” But if we were to pose the same question to IBM, they would nod affirmatively. And it bodes well for us to listen to those at IBM because after a century of trial and error, they have agreed to share some of the reasons behind why data is not only beautiful, but also powerful and astonishing. In celebration of a century of avant-garde thinking, the aptly named IBM THINK exhibit is on display at the Lincoln Center in New York. One of the most striking displays is found at the entrance itself; an incredibly beautiful, 123 foot, digital data wall that “visualizes, in real time, the live data streaming from the systems surrounding the exhibit, from traffic on Broadway, to solar energy, to air quality.”

The IBM Think exhibit is on display at the Lincoln Center in New York until October 23

Once inside the exhibit, which is a veritable visual feast, visitors watch a 12 minute film about “awe inspiring stories of the past and the present”; in essence visitors learn about how the advancements made at IBM have shaped the technological course of the 20th century and the opportunities that lie for “making our world better, today.”

The exhibit concludes with an interactive experience, where visitors can delve into the collective knowledge of the scientific and tech world, from “clocks and scales to microscopes and telescopes, RFID chips and biomedical sensors”, on 40 seven foot screens. Through its data visualization techniques and compelling interactive experiences, the IBM THINK exhibit achieves a rare balance between data analysis and beauty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVrXAsYd1Wk

But the overall theme of the exhibit is not limited to the dissemination of data, rather it poses a grandiose and rather formidable question; how do we use the breakthroughs in the fields of science, technology, and leadership to make the planet a smarter place? So while the BMW Guggenheim Lab experimented with making metropolises better, IBM’s sets its sights on the well-being of the entire world. Is that an audacious quest? Not quite, because if IBM were a person, they would have on their resume, a century of experience in changing the world, written under qualifications.

In fact, not only has IBM propelled the world into the 21^st century, it continues to build up storms in the ever restive sea of our scientific and technological present. For instance, it’s hard to ignore Watson, the IBM self–contained computer system that proves that computers too are capable of placing themselves in jeopardy.  This is because Watson can process natural language and hypothesize between answers, until it arrives at the right answer through weighing different algorithms and determining its confidence level. And Dr. David Ferrucci, the Principal Investigator for the Watson project, is convinced that computer has potential to transform industries such as business and health care.

Let’s also take a look at a technology that may not have created a storm, but perhaps ripples in the much smaller lake of the art world. Earlier this summer, IBM helped the Metropolitan Museum of Art make quantum leaps in art preservation when it installed wireless environmental sensors called Low-Power Motes. These sensors will help the Met monitor the micro-environment through real-time 3D data that will “measure temperature, humidity, air flow, contamination levels, door positions, light levels, and more.” The sensors will help the museum scientists develop correlation models between environmental conditions and the reactions they have on works of art, eventually leading to better models for art preservation.

So in the end, let’s not move forward but backwards. Let’s rewind our clocks back to the year 1911, when IBM’s successor the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation sold products such as employee time keeping systems, punched card equipment, and of all things, automatic meat slicers! Compare meat slicers to Watson or Low-Power Motes and we can begin to appreciate the beauty of data analysis techniques and technological advancements. We can finally begin to nod in unison with IBM.

Can the arts successfully have a game dynamic?

A game dynamic simply put is an element of a game:  levels of achievement or rewards, economic systems to exchanging rewards or credits, cooperative and/or competitive aspects, design layers that change dynamics from one episode to another, and even a series of collectibles can be represented as game dynamic. Game dynamics have recently contributed towards solving medical mysteries, namely the gene folding break-through made on the fold.it puzzle game online.

Now this remarkable game is being put to use to solve the gene folding challenges of Parkinson’s disease among others.  Additionally, there have been arguments that game dynamics are what make sports sectors of the economy flourish.  Sports use a game dynamic that creates cooperation through competition. It is easy to see the potential between game dynamics and the arts but adoption of this idea has yet to garner a widespread support. Check out the previous blog: Planning for Engagement for how cell phone voting is being used at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.  As another example, The AWARD show at the Joyce SoHo presents a level of competition driven by reward - in this case cash prizes for the winners of  voting contests.Some artists have ventured, guns blazing, into game dynamics; the show Best Before by Rimini Protokoll, for instance: “Pulls the multi-player video game out of the virtual realm and rewires it for an intimate theatre setting.”

The answer to the original question posed “Can the arts have a game dynamic successfully?”  is yes. Few creative artists or institutions choose to engage audiences through game dynamics whole-heartedly.  Through utilizing game dynamics, the arts world can overcome certain aesthetic hurdles and adopt  game dynamics for its potential for growth. The result could have an immense impact.

The tools to create these dynamics in the performing and visual arts are available at both high and low technologies, and can be relatively inexpensive. Cell phone voting systems can be purchased from vendors for under $100. At a small scale, usage of http://www.scvngr.com/ allows for a geographic based scavenger hunt and is relatively cost effective. Immediate interaction with audiences can be had by using audience response systems, which are shown to increase attentiveness in schools.

There are rewards at certain institutions for arts patrons who commit to a level of involvement.  There is the relatively common backstage pass, open rehearsal, or meet the artist offerings for subscribers or high-level donors, but these rewards carry with them seemingly little appeal to younger audiences in general. (Of course this is with exceptions.)  In the philanthropic world, voting contests abound to great success. In the coming months I will be using this blog to explore technological tools for implementing game layers in a variety of different ways.  I look forward to the conversations that I hope to have with everyone on this topic!

Protecting Federal Funding for the Arts

In Washington, an era of budget austerity and renewed calls for less government spending have led to increased fears that the arts, long protected from budget cuts, will see its federal funding further decreased for the coming fiscal year.

While Congress has passed several temporary budget measures this year, the most recent continuing resolution ends on November 18th, when the government is set to run out of money. Under the terms of the recent debt-ceiling deal reached by both parties, Congress has committed to cutting $21 billion in spending from the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, and it is widely expected that the bulk of these cuts will come from what’s referred to as “non-defense discretionary spending,” which includes areas such as education, infrastructure, and most pertinent to our community, the arts.

The arts community went through a similar struggle last year, when the National Endowment for the Arts saw its Fiscal Year 2011 funding reduced to $155 million, a $13 million reduction from the year before. For the upcoming fiscal year, the numbers look even worse: a bill passed by the House of Representatives in July would further cut FY2012 NEA funding to $135 million, which would represent a 13 percent decrease and the deepest cut to the agency in 16 years.

Despite the FY2012 budget being due next month, there is still a long way to go. President Obama has requested in his FY2012 budget proposal that the NEA be funded at $146 million, which represents a cut from the FY2011 figures, but is less severe than the House version that was passed in July.

With Congress returning to session this week, it’s important for us in the arts community to use technology to reach out to our members of Congress and ask them to support funding for the arts. There are a number of easy ways you can do this:

• First, contact your member of Congress, either by letter, e-mail or by phone. The easiest way to do this is through the Americans for the Arts website, where you can send a personalized letter to your Congressman and U.S. Senators that includes several talking points about the impact that arts funding has on our communities and nation as a whole.
• Second, join the Arts Action Fund, which is at the forefront of advocating and lobbying for increased funding for arts programs and education. It’s free, and is an invaluable resource providing updates on the efforts in Congress and around the country.
• Third, share the news with a friend on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. One way to do this is by following the Arts Action Fund’s Arts Vote 2012 campaign, dedicated to including arts and arts education issues in the 2012 political campaign. Search for #artsvote on Twitter for recent updates.

This isn’t the first time you’ve heard from Technology in the Arts about lobbying Congress to protect arts funding, and given the current political climate, it certainly won’t be the last. This is not a partisan issue, but is instead an issue that unites all of us who are passionate about the arts community and protecting funding for the next generation of artists and performers.

While the long-term budget deficit is something that we can all agree needs to be dealt with, doing so on the backs of such groups as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities will only serve to further decimate arts education programs at the state and local levels that have already endured painful budget cuts in recent years.

In the newfound era of budget austerity in Washington, any assumptions we had about federal arts funding being kept at past levels are gone. In order to protect the future of arts funding, the fight starts now.

(Photo: CC by kevin dooley)

Google+

Google+, the search engine giant’s new social networking site with 20 million users, has been getting a lot of press lately. There’s already some good advice out there for art nonprofits from the usual suspects (Devon Smith, Heather Mansfield). And artists are already exploring this new way of sharing their music and visual pieces. With technology this new, there is always a lot of experimentation by the early adopters, speculation by the commentators, and caution from the silent majority. But even at this early point in time, when the fate of Google+ is up in the air, there is one thing that I am certain of: that is that Google + represents a revolution in the integration of digital activity and the way we interact with the world around us. In this article, we’ll talk about what sets Google + apart, how it is integrated with other Google products, and what implications it holds for business in general and the arts in particular.

What is Google+?

Check out the Google+ intro video if you haven’t already:

There’s a lot of chatter in the blogosphere right now around the idea that Google+ is the ultimate content-sharing platform. The reasons given for this range from enhanced privacy controls making people more comfortable with sharing to the Sparks feature which allows users to find and share content without leaving the platform.

• Circles

One of the biggest things separating Google+ from the rest of the social media pack is its Circles. Instead of all of your contacts either being a friend/follower or not being one, they can be put into different Circles- friends, family, colleagues, etc. Then- and this is the kicker- you can choose who will view which posts. No more work colleagues or family members seeing your expletive-filled posts or pictures from that party.

Sure, Facebook has groups. But in a Facebook group, users choose to join the group--on Google+, you choose the names of your circles and assign who is in them. In Facebook groups, you can post on the group’s wall (which involves first going to the group page), but anyone who visits the page can see what you posted. With Google+, you can choose to share content only with certain circles, adding an extra layer of privacy.

• Enhanced Privacy Controls

Chris Brogan covers this pretty well in this short video. Privacy controls are more transparent and easy to find compared to Facebook.

• Sparks

Google is still primarily a search engine, so it’s no coincidence that they have an integrated search feature in the network. “Sparks” allows you to enter a topic you’re interested in (say, nonprofits), and every time you login, you can click that word to find many articles on the topic that you can then share with as many or as few Circles as you like.

• +1 and Search Engine Optimization integration

Even if you haven’t made a Google+ account yet, you’ve probably seen the little “+1” icons around the Web. It’s Google’s version of a “like” button. Unlike Facebook’s button, whose data Google doesn’t have access to, a +1 actually impacts search rankings. So, the more +1s a website, article, or video has, the higher it appears in searches, and the more likely people will find it and share it, etc.

If you want to learn more about the nuts and bolts, check out Mashable’s guide to G+.

While all these features may pave the way for Google+ to become the content capital of the interwebs, right now, companies, organizations and brands can’t directly participate in this content-sharing utopia.

Currently, the only way for brands to get their content onto G+ is through “real people’s” accounts- employees, constituents, secret admirers, etc. This makes it even more important that your organization has something interesting to say and compelling to share.

Integration

Imagine a world where the offers you receive are based on data not only from your activities, but your friends’ activities . . . where place-based businesses target customers not only by email and postal mail within certain zip codes, but by what street you are walking down, or which restaurant your friends have gathered at . . . This world, where social networking merges with mobile-based services and retail, is closer than ever to being a reality with Google+.

Already, Google Offers has been launched in New York and San Francisco, beaming coupons to customers based on their location and preferences. According to Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of Commerce, Google Offers and Google Wallet (the company’s payment system) will be integrated into G+ as well as other Google properties such as Maps.

Edd Dumbill at O’Reilly Radar is calling this integration of social networks with other web-based applications a “social backbone” to our entire web experience, as opposed to the “walled garden” of existing social networks.

. . . social features will become pervasive, and fundamental to our interaction with networked services. Collaboration from within applications will be as natural to us as searching for answers on the web it today . . . Search removed the need to remember domain names and URLs . . . . The social backbone will relieve our need to manage email addresses and save us laborious ‘friending’ and permission granting activity . . .

All this integration, says Dumbill, will help computers better serve users.

Where does this leave business?

So the world may be changing. How should you prepare for that? Below are some tips from some smart guys at Social Media Explorer.

Jason Falls “Stay the course with what you’re doing. Wait for the brand-permissions and guidelines to come from Google on the Plus platform. Experiment with it for yourself to know how it works and how non-linear you have to be thinking to optimize the use of Circles.”

Mark Ivey Five questions to ask for starters, and to make sure you’re positioned for the G+ world:

• Are you in the game? Do you have a presence across paid (search, broadcast, etc), earned (events) and owned (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and now G+) media? These are your marketing beachheads, and you’ll need to work across the board to make sure you’re connecting with customers with your messages.
• Do you have a clear content marketing strategy? If so, you’re already using listening tools and engaging in related conversations. Adjust your strategy for G+-and stick to it. If not, better get one in order fast-I just met with two companies last week, neither had a content strategy, both are scrambling in catch-up mode.
• Is your content relevant? If you’re unclear on the role and importance of relevant content, read Michael Brito’s nice analysis piece on SME. Conduct a content audit, compare it to industry conversations, and judge for yourself. Is your content hitting the target? Are you involved and influencing industry conversations? What is your share of voice around key topics?
• Do you have a content engine and systematic publishing process? Then you should have apublishing model and be systematically chunking out content, carefully targeted to your key audiences. Run it like a publisher, with clear editorial direction, calendars, and hire editors to help you drive it- more tips here
• Do you have control over your destiny? Putting all of your eggs into one basket you don’t control is stupid. Why put all your resources into building Facebook Pages when you don’t own that real estate (No one knows how G+ will affect FB yet but the risk is obvious)? The same is true of Google+-it’s a marketing outpost, not your home base. Better to build your own blogs, communities and following, and diversify your investments across several platforms, along with following a carefully crafted plan. Build a defensible program that can weather any storm, since no one knows how this will play out (who would predict G+’s amazing launch?)

This is a great opportunity to step back, take a deep breath and assess your overall strategy and social media program. There’s no reason to panic.

Where does this leave the arts?

Ah- now THAT’S the interesting question, and it’s one our industry will probably be talking about for, oh, the next year or so. With G+’s emphasis on content and people (not brands), two conclusions jump out:

- Producing art that resonates with our audiences is vital, and

- People are our most valuable asset.

To be sure, these aren’t new ideas. What’s new, though, is that what our audience tells each other about our work now has as much or more digital presence than what we tell our audience about our work. The level of content-sharing that Google+ enables means that it is becoming easier for friends to share opinions about articles, art, politics, entertainment, etc at any time. Additionally, the more something is shared, the higher its search ranking. So getting people to talk about art online is more important than ever. Do you ask your audience what they think of your art? Do you encourage them to talk to their friends about it online, continuing the conversation long after they’ve left the building? Do you reward your super-fans who already post about your organization to their social networks? What about tying in the art you present or produce with trending topics?

A new social layer to the web means it’s all about giving ‘em something to talk about.

More cool articles on G+: The Social Layer: Six Thoughts On Where Google Plus Is Going Three Key Things Google Is Doing While We Focus on Google+ What the Circles Illustrate About Influence List of important updates coming soon in Google Plus

Developing Jazz and Classical Audiences with Technology

Technology in the Arts is pleased to present our new white paper Online Audience Engagement: Strategies for Developing Jazz and Classical Audiences, spearheaded by writer Tara George.

Many of you may remember critic Terry Teachout’s controversial Wall Street Journal article that asked if jazz could “be saved?” Teachout’s article, in response to the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, prompted a variety of reactions across the field. Despite much of the hostility directed at Teachout, his question and concerns seemed to be valid and worth exploring, especially since the survey indicatedthat audiences (particularly for jazz, classical and opera music) were shrinking and growing older at an alarming rate. An interesting twist came in 2010 with the release of the NEA’s Audience 2.0 survey. A key finding in this survey was that Americans who participate in the arts through technology and electronic media (television, Internet, handheld devices) were three times more likely to attend a live arts event. Much like Teachout’s initial article, this survey also prompted a round of discussion about correlation and causation. Despite the controversy and debate, it is undeniable that technology is one of the most promising tools that organizations can use to build a younger fan base.

This white paper explores the role that digital marketing is now playing in building audiences in the jazz and classical music realm. This report also highlights the work of several artists and organizations at the forefront of reaching and developing new audiences online. It’s important to note, however, that most of the organizations and artists here would classify their work and the music they present as a hybrid of multiple genres. Though that distinction falls outside the scope of this report, it’s an important trend to take note of that can have a direct impact on digital marketing. Finally, we have provided a concise 4-step guide as an example of how many organizations actually implement best practices.

Organizations Highlighted:

We hope that you find each case study in this report to be encouraging and inspiring! Here were a few of the organizations we featured:

• Mobtown Modern: was founded by Brian Sacawa in 2008. This organization fills a void in Baltimore’s vibrant music scene and serves as a catalyst for musical innovation and the creation and presentation of the new music of our time.
• New Amsterdam Records and New Amsterdam Presents: New Amsterdam Records is the for-profit record label subsidiary of New Amsterdam Presents, a presenting and artists’ service organization that supports the public’s engagement with new music by composers and performers whose work grows from the fertile ground between genres.
• Revive Music Group: serves as New York’s leader in conceptual and never-before-experienced live music productions—for a jazz and hip-hop celebration giving a unique aural exhibition of the undercurrents connecting the genres and ultimately fans of multiple generations.
• Search and Restore: is a New York-based organization dedicated to uniting and developing the audience for new jazz music.

Download this report today!

And please share with colleagues by clicking the "ShareThis" icon below.

The Art of Participatory Culture - Learning to Play WITH Our Audiences

This article was originally a speech for TEDxMichiganAve delivered by David Dombrosky on May 7, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Confucius. He said, “Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” This quote has become one of my touchstones because it reminds me that: life is experiential, and the most resonant experiences in my life were ones in which I was an active participant. The first time I sang a solo for a public audience. Writing and performing a solo theatrical performance in college. Learning how to tango earlier this year.

If the arts community agrees that we want audiences to have deeply resonant experiences with the arts, then the question arises, “How can artists and arts organizations go beyond telling their audiences about the work or showing the work to patrons and actually INVOLVE them in the work?”

Technological advances over the past decade have propelled us into a highly participatory culture, wherein individuals no longer simply consume culture, but they now actively produce and contribute to culture. In 2006, media scholar Henry Jenkins and his colleagues published a white paper entitled Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture in which they described five defining elements for participatory culture.

Jenkin's 5 Traits of Participatory Culture. Image from OpenParenthesis.org

With this article, I would like to address the question of how artists and arts organizations can involve audiences in their work by highlighting how a number of artists and organizations exemplify the defining elements of participatory culture.

#1 – “A participatory culture has relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement.”

We see evidence of this every day. The number of free web tools and mobile apps that have been released over the past decade is astronomical. With each successive release, the barrier to artistic expression and engagement is lowered that much more.

One recently released, free tool called Broadcastr allows people to record 3-minute audio segments and pin them to specific locations on a map that is available on their website as well as through their mobile application.

Many of you may know the Neo-Futurists, a theatre performance group originally established here in Chicago. Their New York City chapter has a show called Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind which contains 30 plays performed in 60 minutes. Earlier this year, they used Broadcastr to create 30 plays in 30 blocks. So if you go to Second Avenue in Manhattan, you can walk from Houston Street to 29th Street and experience 30 location-specific, interactive pieces of audio content. Some of them direct you to do things, some of them are little songs, some of them are plays with multiple voices, and some of them reference their locations very directly.

The technology required to do this? Either a computer with speakers and a microphone OR a smartphone. That’s it.

#2 - A participatory culture has strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others

Over the past two years, choral composer Eric Whitacre has worked with singers from around the world to create “virtual choirs” for the performance of his compositions. Participating singers download a PDF version of the sheet music for their vocal part. They watch a YouTube video of Whitacre conducting the music, record their vocal tracks, then send the tracks to Whitacre for final editing. Whitacre and his producer then combine all of the vocal tracks together into a single audio composition and syncs it with a video featuring a virtual riser with the floating faces of each of the singers performing the piece.

His most recent virtual choir composition entitled “Sleep” features 2052 singers from 58 different countries. As of today, the video has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on YouTube. His 2009 virtual choir composition “Lux Aurumque” has had over 2.4 million views.

#3 - A participatory culture has some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices

One organization which exemplifies this element is the San Francisco Symphony. With their Community of Music Makers program, the symphony serves amateur adult musicians and promotes active participation in music-making and lifelong learning. Community of Music Makers includes workshops and events for amateur vocalists and instrumentalists in symphony’s performance hall, where participants are able to improve their skills. They also receive live and online coaching sessions from the symphony’s musicians and artistic staff. A chamber music convening service serves as a clearinghouse to help individual players and ensembles connect each other and identify performance opportunities in the local community.

The lesson here? Learn to love amateurs as they are likely to be a strong core from which to further develop your audience.

#4 – In a participatory culture, members believe that their contributions matter.

The Brooklyn Museum pioneered crowd-curation in 2008 with its photography exhibition Click! First launched through an open call for artists to submit photos related to the theme of “The Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” the artwork was then made available online for anyone to curate. This year, they are taking another spin on this concept with the exhibition Split Second: Indian Paintings, which invited the Brooklyn Museum’s online community to participate in a project that will result in a small installation of Indian paintings from the Museum’s permanent collection in July 2011.

The first stage of the project explores split-second reactions: in a timed trial, participants were asked to select which painting they prefer from a randomly generated pair of images. Next, participants were asked to write in their own words about a painting before rating its appeal on a scale. In the final stage, participants were asked to rate a work of art after being given unlimited time to view it alongside typical interpretive text. Each part of the exercise aims to examine how a different type of information—or a lack thereof—might affect a person's reaction to a work of art.

Once the exhibit opens in July 2011, visitors will be able to view a small selection of the paintings that generated the most controversial and dynamic responses during the evaluation process, accompanied by a visualization and analysis of the data collected.

With both of these experiments from the museum, the online participants had a clear understanding of how their contributions would matter to the overall project.

In April of this year, choreographer Jonah Boaker debuted FILTER at the Ferst Center for the Performing Arts at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta. FILTER explores how the audience can serve as a collaborative filter for the performance through the use of a mobile application.

Interview eith Jonah Bokaer about FILTER.

Boaker worked closely with students from the university’s Music Technology Program to develop MassMobile, a smartphone app that acts as an interactive platform for audience members to participate by affecting the stage in different ways. Boaker’s approach to participation actually allows the audience to co-create the artistic experience in real-time.

#5 - In a participatory culture, members feel some degree of social connection with one another

Okay, so my absolute favorite exemplar of this element is the MP3 Experiment created and hosted by Improv Everywhere in New York City. Begun in 2003, the concept is quite simple. Improv Everywhere puts an original mp3 file online (usually around 45 minutes long) that people download and transfer to their iPods. Participants then: synchronize their watches to a clock on the organization's website, venture out to the same public location, and blend in with the crowd. At the predetermined time, everyone presses play. Participants then carry out coordinated instructions delivered to their headphones via narrator “Steve,” and everyone around them tries to figure out what in the world is going on.

In 2010, over 3,000 people participated in a MP3 Experiment in Midtown Manhattan. The event started in retail stores and progressed to Bryant Park for the narrator’s surprise birthday. The event ended with a massive toilet-paper-mummy dance party.

The next Mp3 Experiment in New York is scheduled for July 16, 2011. Stay tuned to the Improv Everywhere site if you're in New York and wish to participate.

Something to consider about all of the artists and arts organizations that I’ve mentioned here is that they all invite the audience to play.

As an industry, we have spent so much of our time playing FOR the audience or playing TO the audience. In order for our sector to thrive in this participatory culture, we must now invest a significant amount of time and energy exploring ways to play WITH the audience.

Tech tools for your arts job search

After two years writing for Technology in the Arts, I am leaving the Center for Arts Management and Technology. The unfortunate part about being a graduate student is that you will have to leave a place you love after a certain number of years, and my number is up! Special thanks to David and the rest of the CAMT staff for making the last two years amazing, educational, and memorable. I am very excited about my new position with the data-driven arts and entertainment consulting firm TRG Arts. I have been hired as the Strategic Communications Specialist, which means I will serve as a writer and editor for the firm’s consulting projects, Data Lab research and analytics projects, and a contributor to TRG’s knowledge center online.

Before I leave Technology in the Arts, I wanted to share some of the secrets I learned during the last few months of looking for arts jobs, mainly at non-profit organizations. Because nonprofits usually begin their fiscal year in July, new positions at these organizations are often posted in the summer. That means now is the prime time for you to find your new dream job in the arts.

Here are my favorite tech tools to help you find that job:

Changedetection.com

Arts jobs often need to be filled quickly, which also means the time you have to apply is limited. We’ve all had the experience of finding a great—no, perfect—job and finding out that the “apply by” date has passed or being informed after you’ve submitted your resume that the company had already extended an offer to someone.

Changedetection.com comes in handy when you know that there is a company (or companies) you’d love to work for. Obviously you aren’t going to check in on the employment page of their website every day. Better that you just be notified when they post a job, right? Well, through the magic of technology, you can find out when that employment page changes. Changedetection checks the page every day, week or month (you specify which) and sends you an email when there has been a change.

If there is a specific geographic location you know you’d like to work in, changedetection can help too. For example, I was looking for jobs in Portland at the beginning of my search. I looked on the arts council website and there wasn’t a job board, but I wasn’t going to let a silly little thing like that stop me! What the arts council site DID have was a listing of all the arts orgs in Portland. I put a changedetection on the employment page of each organization I was interested in and got on with my search.

The downside of tracking all these pages is that you might have to sort through some jobs that aren’t for you. For example, I looked mainly at full-time marketing jobs, but I was notified for ANY job at those companies, including development and box office jobs, and in some cases, internships. However, you can take this as an opportunity to build networks. If you see a great job in finance, maybe you have a friend who looking who also happens to be a finance whiz. Forward the job to her and not only have you strengthened your friendship, but also she may want to return the favor if she comes across a job that fits you.

I would recommend setting these up relatively early in your job search and keep adding as you find companies that are of interest to you. This way, you will also see which jobs come up and how frequently as well as important information like salary ranges and organizational structure information. (For example, will you be working for someone who is a new hire herself/himself? Is there a new Executive Director at the org?)

The interface for monitoring a page on ChangeDetection.com

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has attempted to tout itself as a job-finding service. However, at the early-career/emerging leader level, I find that is less helpful for finding jobs and more helpful for simply networking. There’s not that many headhunters out there for arts jobs, except in the executive level and maybe for IT people.

Anyway, how many times have we heard that the arts world is a small world? I use LinkedIn to see if there’s anyone I know who may know someone at the company I am applying to. If your relationship is good with that person, ask them to put in a good word for you.

Sometimes LinkedIn groups will have job postings; I haven’t found this to be true for most of the arts admin/management groups though. Please comment below if you know of a good group for this.

GuideStar

For non-profit organizations, it’s essential to check out the company on GuideStar. GuideStar is a free service that gathers and publicizes information about nonprofit organizations. Much of the information is geared toward donors and foundations, but there is a lot of useful information on it for the job seeker.

Once you register (free), you have access to almost any arts organization’s 990 tax forms, which means you can see what the organization’s budget size is and how they are doing financially. Note that for many organizations, the most recent year might be 2008 or 2009, so the information could be slightly dated or influenced by the recession—which is still important to know. The 990 serves not only as a way to see if the org has a record of keeping a balanced budget, but also as a historical snapshot of the organization, in terms of grants received, senior staff turnover, and capital campaigns and similar projects, among other things.

GuideStar is also extremely helpful to estimate salaries, especially if you are applying to a director-level position. The IRS requires non-profits to list the salaries of their five highest-paid employees. This is pretty valuable information, as the size of most non-profit arts organizations means that you aren’t likely to find very accurate information on that exact job at that exact organization.

Arts Jobs Sites

One of my friends posted a status update recently “wondering if CareerBuilder is really a builder”. I replied that all it had “built” for me was piles of emails in my spam folder. Personally, I’ve had a lot more luck overall with industry-specific sites, some of which can be used in conjunction with changedetection, as discussed above. (Bonus: The industry-specific sites manage to present you with jobs without asking if you want information from University of Phoenix every other time you go to look at a job. Just saying.)  Here are my favorites:

General:

• CAMT’s own ArtsOpportunities
• Americans for the Arts' Job Bank

By discipline:

• Playbill Job Listings (mostly theatre)
• Theatre Communications Group's Arts Search (need a log-in and password for this one)
• Association of Performing Arts Presenters Job Bank
• Opera America Job Listings (also available as an RSS Feed)
• Dance USA Jobs in the Arts
• Association of Children’s Museums
• American Association of Museums' jobHQ
• Chronicle of Higher Education (mostly faculty positions at colleges and universities)
• Also, Createquity will occasionally post interesting opportunities, so that is worth adding to your RSS feed if you haven’t already.

State and local arts councils may have a good job posting site, depending on where you’re looking to find a job. For example:

• Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance
• Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington (Washington D.C., not Washington state)
• New York Foundation for the Arts

Lastly, if you have an interest in development or program management, heads up! There are a few sites/ email alerts that I’ve found especially useful:

Philanthropy News Digest (A service of Foundationcenter.org)

PND has created a job alert system that will email you a daily summary of recent jobs in your area of interest. I cast my net wide by checking a lot of states and position types (communications, development, program management, etc) when I signed up for the alerts. I now get about 15 job postings a day. The fields of the organizations are quite diverse too. A recent email contained jobs from Napa Valley Opera House, University of Chicago, the Rainforest Alliance, and Vera Institute of Justice.

Chronicle of Philanthropy

Chronicle of Philanthropy posts mostly development jobs, which, like PND, you can sort by location, position type, and the field of the organization (education, health, museum, etc).

DotOrgJobs

It’s also worth mentioning that DotOrgJobs is good for fundraising jobs and other nonprofit jobs; however, I have not seen a lot of arts-specific jobs from them. You can subscribe via email or RSS feed.

On organizing email alerts:

You might be saying to yourself, “That’s a lot of email alerts to deal with.” I use gmail and have set a rule to have these emails automatically labeled “job search” and archived so that they don’t clutter up my inbox. Then I set an alert on Google Calendar reminding me to go through them once a week, so that I actually read them! This can also easily be done with Outlook.

Do you know of any other good sources for arts jobs? If so, please post them below!  Happy hunting!

The Art of Social Media Analytics, Part 3

Summer is the “off-season” for many of us in the arts world. Why not take this time to refresh your social media strategy? This is part 3 of our 3-part series on social media analytics tools. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

The last part of our series concerns making management decisions based on data. Once you have the data, what do you do with it? As we come up with more sophisticated methods to track social media sentiment and reach, it becomes possible to track more accurately how people are responding to social media. This is especially important because social media can be a valuable part of your market research. It is like a 24-hour focus group, answering many of the questions you may have about your audience as well as the questions you didn’t think to ask.

As mentioned in Part 2, there are a variety of questions that you may have about your audience and a variety of tools that track different measures of success. Some tools are narrowly focused on one measure, while others give you a conglomeration of these measures. Some examples of the measurements of success include:

• Sentiment: Are social media users referring to my organization positively, negatively, or neutrally?
• Conversions: How many and which fans are buying online (or offline)?
• Spikes in activity or “buzz”: How are social media users responding online to campaigns?
• Impact: How many people is the message reaching and how much influence does the organization have? How many people are sharing posts?

When thinking about measurement tools and management decisions, the first question is often, when is it worth it to pay for analytic tools? As technology evolves to be able to track more specific and more valuable information, more paid analytics tools have come on to the market.  There are two basic instances where it’s worth it:

1) when you have a large customer base

2) when you need enterprise-level social media analytics

Firstly, if you have a large customer base or a large social media base (no hard and fast rule, but larger than 100,000) and you are literally having trouble monitoring comments on your brand, you need a tool that takes more of a summary view. Secondly, most paid tools are enterprise-level tools--tools that more than one person can manage or assign tasks to others and have other special features. If you feel you need this type of functionality, then paying for an analytics may be worth it.

Besides those two factors, a company should also consider the elusive “Holy Grail of Social Media,” return on investment, or ROI. Many organizations have found a “chicken and the egg” scenario of needing time and resources to show results (often, revenue), but needing results to convince upper management to spare the time and resources to devote to social media. This situation can be difficult; you might try proposing a pilot program or experiment with a cheap or free tool before proposing a larger investment.

One institution that has made a practice of using data to make decisions in social media (as well as investing in technology—check out their web and new media strategy) is the Smithsonian, under the guidance of tech guru Nancy Proctor. As one employee put it “why would you change anything without metrics and feedback?”

Once a company has the analytics tools in place it’s easy to observe your numbers of fans, interactions, and gauge the quality of those interactions. What’s more difficult is translating your observations into actionable decisions.

A simple example is that of David Horgan’s, eMarketing Specialist for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. David had experimented with linking ads to their Facebook page and their homepage. “We found that the ads that direct people to our Facebook page (rather than to our homepage) were about 3x more effective on a cost per click basis.” Management Decision: Direct more ads to the Facebook page than the homepage.

Another example is the blogathon on the Smithsonian Collections Blog that Rachael Cristine Woody worked on for American Archives Month. According to Rachel:

Until that time we had almost solely focused on collections content.  In October we shifted to also cover our profession and offer a more behind-the-scenes look at what we do/deal with, every day.  These posts became the most popular posts we’ve published so far, numbering in the thousands for direct hits, and to this day still receive at least 100 hits a week.  It was at that time that I think the blog truly found its most invested and engaged audience, and it helped to call attention to us that we should be covering more on our profession.  Management Decision: In addition to giving the collections exposure, engage and influence the professional community by providing transparency, advice, and support.

The National Museum of American History combined traditional survey techniques with data from analytics tools (Google Analytics and WebTrends data, click metrics from HootSuite, etc.), comparing the results of four closely-related surveys on each of four major communication channels (their blog, email newsletter, Facebook page, and Twitter feed). Although more complex, the results allowed Dana Allen-Greil to make decisions regarding how the Smithsonian communicated with patrons:

At the National Museum of American History, we’ve long had a hunch that our Twitter feed should focus on conversational and educational content, rather than marketing in-person events. If our followers aren’t local, do they really want to hear about events they can’t come too? Click metrics from HootSuite plus data from a survey of our Twitter followers gave us solid footing to make the case against Twitter as a platform for driving foot traffic to the museum.  Less than 25% of responders reported planning a visit to the museum after seeing a message from us—this is compared with over 55% of email subscribers who said they did.  Even more to the point, less than 10% of Twitter followers reported attending an event compared with over 30% of our email readers.  We discovered a similar trend with our Facebook fans and have altered our content strategy accordingly. Management Decision: Use Email (not Twitter) to Promote Synchronous, Location-Specific Events.

More info on Dana's Twitter content strategy can be found here.

So there you have it. As much as social media can seem nebulous, there are specific things to measure, to think about and analyze, and then to make decisions that you can feel confident about. When you develop your social media strategy for your next season, mix things up a bit with some new questions about your audience, new tools, and a new perspective on the art of social media analytics.

Special Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this series: Michael Edson, Brian Hinrichs, Maggie Johnson, Katryn Geane, Kristin Garbarino, Devon Smith, Lindsay O’Leary, and Crystal Wallis.